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" Overall though, Catholics believe the matter goes to the fundamental relationship between the church and the state. And Catholic clergy have a long history of civil disobedience. "...

Part of the problem has been the clergy's lack of civic duty or care wrt paedo and othe abuse. If they could put some caveat in their lore that allows a priest the option of speaking out if faced with a person owning up to acts of human abuse then that's be good.

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This is going to be nigh-impossible to prosecute, but it seems like something that's worth having on the books. It would help clergy who do report defend themselves from their superiors in the church if they ever come under fire for reporting such things. I don't know if that pressure exists or not, but this seems sensible all round.

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In Australian law, both the common law privilege of confidentiality between married people and the privilege of spouses not to testify against each other were assumed to have continued with the "reception" of English law.[12]

On 30 November 2011, the High Court of Australia decided that neither privilege existed in common law.[13][14] However, a form of spousal privilege in regards to criminal trials is preserved by the Evidence Acts.

Should we get rid of that, too?

2

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In Australian law, both the common law privilege of confidentiality between married people and the privilege of spouses not to testify against each other were assumed to have continued with the "reception" of English law.[12]

On 30 November 2011, the High Court of Australia decided that neither privilege existed in common law.[13][14] However, a form of spousal privilege in regards to criminal trials is preserved by the Evidence Acts.

Should we get rid of that, too?

Why?

It is not mandatory, a spouse can testify for or against a partner or elect not to do either, that's what the privilege confers.

Slippery thing is the law - probably explains a lot of lawyers you would not want to shake hands with and if you had to you'd go wash after :)

Cheers

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In Australian law, both the common law privilege of confidentiality between married people and the privilege of spouses not to testify against each other were assumed to have continued with the "reception" of English law.[12]

On 30 November 2011, the High Court of Australia decided that neither privilege existed in common law.[13][14] However, a form of spousal privilege in regards to criminal trials is preserved by the Evidence Acts.

Should we get rid of that, too?

why not ? Then an alibi from a partner / spouse can hold more value too ...

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In Australian law, both the common law privilege of confidentiality between married people and the privilege of spouses not to testify against each other were assumed to have continued with the "reception" of English law.[12]

On 30 November 2011, the High Court of Australia decided that neither privilege existed in common law.[13][14] However, a form of spousal privilege in regards to criminal trials is preserved by the Evidence Acts.

Should we get rid of that, too?

It's not really a fair comparison. Mandatory reporting, which is a legal phrase with a specific meaning, is the exception, not the norm. Teachers are mandatory reporters. If they think a child is being abused, even if they have no evidence, they must report their suspicion to the police and are shielded from consequences if they are wrong (as long as they don't spread their suspicion beyond the police). Failure to report reasonable suspicion could result in charges.

As a counter-example, HR managers are generally not mandatory reporters. If a HR manager suspects an employee is a child-abuser, they're legally allowed to quietly attempt to brush the situation under a rug without looking into it further. Not very ethical, but unless they have hard evidence to turn the suspicion into certainty, probably not illegal[1].

With respect to the seal of marriage, no one is talking about making mandatory reporting the standard for the general population. It's simply being extended to cover priests. In general, careers which require you to be vetted for working with children are also mandatory reporting vocations. I don't know if the clergy does require working with children vetting, but based on what's come to light about the catholic church over the last 20 years, it sure seems like maybe it should do, and passing this law would be consistent with how such vocations are handled.

[1] If they know for sure there's probably a really complex knot of laws involved, I don't know how that could play out. Possibly lots of different ways.

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In Australian law, both the common law privilege of confidentiality between married people and the privilege of spouses not to testify against each other were assumed to have continued with the "reception" of English law.[12]

On 30 November 2011, the High Court of Australia decided that neither privilege existed in common law.[13][14] However, a form of spousal privilege in regards to criminal trials is preserved by the Evidence Acts.

Should we get rid of that, too?

It's not really a fair comparison. Mandatory reporting, which is a legal phrase with a specific meaning, is the exception, not the norm. Teachers are mandatory reporters. If they think a child is being abused, even if they have no evidence, they must report their suspicion to the police and are shielded from consequences if they are wrong (as long as they don't spread their suspicion beyond the police). Failure to report reasonable suspicion could result in charges.

As a counter-example, HR managers are generally not mandatory reporters. If a HR manager suspects an employee is a child-abuser, they're legally allowed to quietly attempt to brush the situation under a rug without looking into it further. Not very ethical, but unless they have hard evidence to turn the suspicion into certainty, probably not illegal[1].

With respect to the seal of marriage, no one is talking about making mandatory reporting the standard for the general population. It's simply being extended to cover priests. In general, careers which require you to be vetted for working with children are also mandatory reporting vocations. I don't know if the clergy does require working with children vetting, but based on what's come to light about the catholic church over the last 20 years, it sure seems like maybe it should do, and passing this law would be consistent with how such vocations are handled.

[1] If they know for sure there's probably a really complex knot of laws involved, I don't know how that could play out. Possibly lots of different ways.

I didn't know that about HR managers.

With regard to the underlined; Serioulsy ? Not making it mandatory, and allowing one's spouse the right to not speak against their spouse only helps to keep things shielded that should not perhaps be shielded.

If we expect priests to be responsible for reporting the abuse issued by confessors then we could at least respect that by not harbouring our own abusers.

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it was well know that there were preists with issues, the church did not need a confesion to report them to the police, or at the very least, take away their priesthood

even my very religious parents (church every sunday) , suddenly stoped going to church

I dunno 'bout that TMFP ;) I reckon a lot of them likely did confess as part of their 'inhouse' penance for causing mischief in so much as having to rehouse them across the country once their paedo behaviour started to manifest in unruly boys making trouble, and not having them dealt with outside the church. << This would appease ( I guess ) both the confessor as well as the confessee...

Far better to give private absolution so's the scum can be holy again before their next encounter.

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Working in the Children's Ministry with my church, I'm a mandatory reporter, it's part of our duty of care. We're all required to have our Working with Children numbers on record. We don't practice secret confession, if someone tells us they've committed a serious crime we report it. God forgives, the state punishes.The seal of confession crap is reasonably recent RC procedure which needs a fairly simple change - if you confess to an actionable offence, there is no seal.

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So. If a Catholic priest alerts the authorities of a sexually abusing priest then the alertee is excommunicated by the Church. Because of this, there is a lack of desire by the high-ups to allow the confessional to be used against sexual predators. I get that if a priest knows of the possibility of their confessee dobbing on them they may not even confess in the first place . In which case it might pay to keep the sanctity of the confessional.

Frankly the idea of the confessional continuing on being totally sacred scares the beegeezus out of me. It's a real catch-22 situation which doesn't at all offer comfort. Perhaps the whole idea of the confessional needs to be given the heave-ho. I mean it seems that it really doesn't stop the most inherently inhumane nasties from hapenning, that's totally proven already.

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Frankly the idea of the confessional continuing on being totally sacred scares the beegeezus out of me. It's a real catch-22 situation which doesn't at all offer comfort. Perhaps the whole idea of the confessional needs to be given the heave-ho. I mean it seems that it really doesn't stop the most inherently inhumane nasties from hapenning, that's totally proven already.

There's no logic in arguing this. It's all true.

The problem comes from people who use "Faith" as the go-to.

I mean, I can't shit all over faith. I have faith I'll wake up tomorrow for example; but thats based on the fact that I'm not diagnosed with a terminal illness.

I'm sure there are plenty of people who have genuine religious faith based on what we can only call a 'miracle' as we understand it. So more power to them;

However, the rest of them are just practicing BLIND faith. And blind faith follows without thought, and without critical analysis.

Problem? If you walk up to someone with blind faith, and tell them how wrong X is (in this case, secret confessions), they've been blindly told it's sacred, so they'll fight, and some of them die, to protect it.

Humans are the problem. We know too much about them; and we've gotten too smart at controlling them.

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Frankly the idea of the confessional continuing on being totally sacred scares the beegeezus out of me. It's a real catch-22 situation which doesn't at all offer comfort. Perhaps the whole idea of the confessional needs to be given the heave-ho. I mean it seems that it really doesn't stop the most inherently inhumane nasties from hapenning, that's totally proven already.

There's no logic in arguing this. It's all true.

The problem comes from people who use "Faith" as the go-to.

I mean, I can't shit all over faith. I have faith I'll wake up tomorrow for example; but thats based on the fact that I'm not diagnosed with a terminal illness.

I'm sure there are plenty of people who have genuine religious faith based on what we can only call a 'miracle' as we understand it. So more power to them;

However, the rest of them are just practicing BLIND faith. And blind faith follows without thought, and without critical analysis.

Problem? If you walk up to someone with blind faith, and tell them how wrong X is (in this case, secret confessions), they've been blindly told it's sacred, so they'll fight, and some of them die, to protect it.

Humans are the problem. We know too much about them; and we've gotten too smart at controlling them.

... but sometimes the confessional does work. Especially if it's used as I think it might first have been intended as a way for two people to communicate about important issues and get some constructive feedback. I think the idea of prayers for penance is a copout orchestrated by lazy bloated clergy more interested in the sumptuous supper and sly child fucks they might be missing out on in order to be seen to be doing their duty ...imo.